


home is a place

by millepertuis



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Identity Issues, POV Iris West, Pre-Canon, Season/Series 01, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sunday night dinners in the West-Allen family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	home is a place

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> Title from Moddi's House By The Sea.
> 
> Happy holidays!

1.

 

She wakes up to her Dad shaking her shoulder.

“Baby?”

Night fell sometime after she nodded off on the couch, she realizes, but even in the dark she can tell how tired he looks. She catches sight of Barry, half-hidden behind him, and her throat closes up. She wants—she wants to go to him and hug him and never let him go. She wants to tug on his arm to make him lie down with her so they can sleep until everything is okay again. She wants to give him his mom back. She’d do _anything_ to give him his mom back. Nora was so kind, and warm, and funny, and it doesn’t make sense that she’s gone. She can’t be gone.

Iris doesn’t know how to fix anything.

“Barry’s gonna stay with us for a while,” her Dad says. “Can you go set the table while I show him around?”

She nods. She can’t say anything. She looks at Barry but he’s not looking back. She nods again and sets off to the kitchen.

They join her after a few minutes and Joe starts taking things out of the fridge—tomatoes and garlic and mushrooms and chicken breasts. It’s a bit late, so she thought he’d make something quick and send them to bed, but he takes his time and gently coaxes Barry into helping. Barry doesn’t talk at all, but he listens intently to everything Joe tells him, is more focused than she's ever seen him as he cuts the tomatoes, as he stirs the sauce, as he helps clean everything as they go along.

Iris usually gets bored and wanders off pretty quickly, but this time she sits at the small kitchen table and stays the whole hour it takes before the food’s ready, even when there’s nothing left to do but wait for it to cook and no one’s talking at all.

“Here,” Joe says softly as he sets a plate down in front of Barry, who looks down at it for a while like he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it. Iris has been trying for the past hour—for the past couple of days, really—to find a way to make it better, but she still hasn’t found anything to tell him other than the sad half-truth of: you get used to it. They’re just kids. He looks so lost and she’s just a kid, she doesn’t know what to do. How is she supposed to show him the way back? Back to what? Nora’s gone and his dad—his dad isn’t here either. Joe and Iris are all he’s got.

Barry’s not eating, and Iris isn’t eating, and Joe isn’t either, they’re just sitting there staring at Barry who’s staring at his plate, and they don’t know what to do.

She impulsively takes his hand in hers and squeezes. For a second he doesn’t react and she’s convinced she did the worst thing possible, that he’s going to shatter in a thousand tiny pieces that she’ll never be able to put back together, but then he squeezes back, keeps squeezing as hard as he can like he’s about to fall over a cliff and she’s the only thing he can hold on to. It’s a bit uncomfortable, and it’s not gonna be easy to eat with her left hand, but she doesn’t ask him to let go.

After a couple of minutes, he picks up his fork and starts eating. They follow suit.

 

 

 

2.

  

“Yes, Dad. We haven’t set the house on fire yet and we’ve still got most of our limbs.”

“What do you mean, _most_ of—”

“I was kidding! Love you,” she says quickly because she can’t help herself, and even waits for him to say it back before she hangs up on him.

They’ve finally convinced Joe that they can manage on their own, but to be honest Iris isn’t sure him calling ten times a night to make sure everything’s in order isn’t worse than the babysitters were.

“What are we watching?” Barry asks as he comes back into the living room, setting the pizza down on the coffee table. She unpauses _When Harry Met Sally_ that she had waiting.

Sunday night means Joe’s home-cooked meals, but Iris and Barry have their own tradition for the times he’s held up at work: blankets and takeouts and cuddling in front of the TV.

“Come on,” she says, lifting her blanket. His whole face turns red but he slides in and she arranges the blanket around them and then burrows into him. After a moment of hesitation he puts his arm around her and she sighs contentedly.

She complains a lot about her dad’s constant check-ups but the truth is that she can never feel quite settled when he’s stuck at work. Barry can’t either, always glancing at the clock and subconsciously wiggling his foot until she puts a hand on his thigh and presses down to make it stop. This helps, though—the warm cocoon of the blankets, the faint glow of the television in the dark room, Barry’s arm around her. She thinks maybe years of snuggling together into blankets have trained her body into always relaxing in Barry’s close proximity, like she can’t possibly feel anxious when he’s near.

Iris doesn’t much like to think about Barry’s life before he came home with them—she hates to think of how easily he might have gone to another family—but what she hates most of all though is to think about him leaving. She’d do anything to help clear his dad, but she’s terrified he’ll take Barry and move away, as far as he can from Central City, because why would he want to stay in the city where his wife was murdered, where he was accused of her murder and imprisoned for years?

She wraps herself tighter around Barry like that might be enough to keep him here forever.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

She’s made him promise never to leave several times already, but she feels the need to do it again.

“Barry?”

“Yeah?”

“If—when your dad gets out, do you think—”

She can’t get the words out. _Don’t let him take you away. Don’t ever leave._

“You won’t move away, right?” she finally asks. “You’ll still see us?”

“Of course I will,” he promptly replies, sounding offended she even has to ask.

“You promise?”

He looks down at her, then away. “I promise.”

It’s hard to properly make out his face with only the light of the television; maybe that’s why she doesn’t feel completely reassured still. _What if his dad doesn’t leave him a choice?_ she thinks.

“College,” she blurts out. “If we can go to college in the same city, or—after, we’ll live close to each other, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “It’s not like I have a choice,” he jokes. “Joe’s gonna go mad if he can’t check on us himself, but if he can get us to spy on each other for him he won’t have to send plain-clothes officers to follow us around and check we’re eating our veggies. We could get a place together, to make the surveillance easier. And also play pranks on him to teach him he should trust us but really show that we should never be left alone.”

“I’d like that,” she says, and they eventually fall asleep in front of the forgotten movie like that, the pizza still cooling down in its box, exchanging whispers about how they’d divide up the chores and what colors they’d paint their rooms and if they should keep plants around and what kind and how many.

 

 

 

She wakes up hours later when she hears the front door open. Her whole body is warm and her lids heavy, her head buried in the crook of Barry’s neck, his hand loosely wrapped over her ribs.

She feels her Dad kiss her forehead, then lean over to kiss Barry’s, and falls back asleep before he’s even left the room, her mind finally quiet now that he’s home safe.

 

 

  

3.

 

“Iris?” Barry hisses into the phone.

“Barry? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way, I swear!” Which, in Barry-speak, means he's at least half an hour away. “I need you to make a diversion.”

“Because you’re late for Sunday dinner for the gazillionth time?”

“ _Iris_ ,” he whines. “I promised Joe last week I’d make an effort to be on time.”

“And he believed you?”

“Well, no,” he admits. “He bet me the _Captain Marvel_ issue that I won’t loan him and he can’t find anywhere else.”

“And you held out that long?” she says skeptically.

“Well, no. But he didn’t catch me at it! So it really doesn’t count.”

“If I’m helping you, I want a cut of whatever it is you’re getting,” she warns.

“Like what? Ten percent of my dignity?”

“Like you have any,” she says automatically before what he said catches up to her and she groans. “Seriously? Barry, how can you still fall for that? He was already making you bet against yourself to get you to brush your teeth when you were twelve.”

Barry mutters something whiny-sounding that she has the good grace to ignore.

“Whatever,” she says, checking her dad isn’t around before heading to the kitchen. “You owe me. Like, get me coffee everyday, let me choose the movie for the next forever, owe me.”

“Ugh, sure,” he says. Neither of them mentioned that he always lets her choose the movie, and that the only days he doesn’t bring her coffee are the days she brings him some first.

She turns off the oven.

“You better be here in fifteen minutes tops, Barry,” she warns as she hides the mash potatoes in the cereal cupboard. “No stopping to help old ladies cross the street. Don’t stop to follow rare nerdy butterflies around. If you see a box of abandoned kittens in the rain, _you leave them there_.”

“Yes, Iris.”

She hides the salt in the fridge and the salad in the microwave.

“Do you want me to keep you company on the phone until you get here?”

“Yes, please,” he says. She can hear the goofy smile in his voice, and it makes her feel warm all over.

She settles on the living room couch just in time to see Joe get into the kitchen and start frowning at the oven. He looks around and starts visibly panicking before he catches sight of Iris with the phone. _Et tu, Brute_ , he mouths at her, the words so familiar from all the times Iris and Barry have ganged up at him that she doesn't need to read his lips to know what he's saying.

She shrugs.

“I didn’t mean it about the kittens,” she says into the phone while Joe flits around the kitchen. Barry laughs. “I know,” he says fondly.

Barry makes it just in time to slide his legs under the table and start eating. Joe pouts the whole night while Barry and Iris make faces at each other and keep kicking each other under the table.

 

 

 

4.

 

She’s about to push the door open and come in when she hears her dad and stills:

“Is he—” Joe takes a breath, and she realizes that whatever he’s going to say isn’t something she wants to hear, but it’s too late, she’s rooted in place.

“Is he ever going to wake up?”

Iris can’t hear the nurse’s answer. She can’t hear anything besides the blood rushing to her head, making her dizzy. All she can think about is, she’s never heard her dad sound like that. Joe West is the bravest, strongest person she knows. She’s never heard him sound like that.

“Excuse me,” says the nurse as she passes past Iris on her way out. Iris mechanically gets inside, kisses her dad hello and sits down next to Barry. It looks like someone’s shaved him since she saw him yesterday.

The first couple of weeks she could barely leave Barry’s side, so convinced he’d wake up any minute. She’s spent hours staring at him, his motionless body. Sometimes she gets afraid she’s only imagining his chest moving up and down and needs to place her hand over his ribcage to feel it expand with every breath. She tries not to do it when there’s anyone else in the room, though.

“Here,” Joe says, handing her a sandwich.

“Thank you.”

She starts eating but she can’t taste anything. She can’t see anything but Barry. After hours of staring at him she’s gained a new understanding of the exact length of his eyelashes, of the curve of his jaw, the color of his mouth—she used to think she knew everything about him but there’s still so much she doesn’t know. She just needs a bit more time.

She can hear Joe softly speaking to Barry—details about one of his cases, she thinks. She hasn’t tried talking to Barry since the last time she lost her temper and shouted at him until she got kicked out of his room.

She’s tried everything she could think of, like he'd just wake up if she could find the right combination of words. She begged him to come back, tried to bribe him. She told him everything that had been happening—sometimes holding things back to try and get him curious enough to wake up. She read him comics that he hadn’t gotten his hands on yet and stopped a couple of pages before the end.

She told him about the new Star Wars movies and he didn’t even twitch.

She knows if she stares at him long enough the words will pour out of her mouth again, and it’ll be useless, and she’ll end up feeling even more hollow every time she takes his hand and squeezes and he doesn’t squeeze back.

“I miss him,” Joe tells her suddenly. She startles.

They spent the whole first week at his bedside, taking turns breaking down, and then they had to go back to work and now she has to sneak in after visitation hours just to spend a few hours with him, just to make sure he’s still breathing.

The truth is, she didn’t realize he took up so much of her time until she went back to her life and felt empty without him—he was always popping up at her work and sending her silly puns and math jokes and cat videos throughout the day and there were Sunday dinners but they had also movie nights on Fridays and they’d carve out Barry-and-Iris time a couple of times during the week, go to the zoo or the museum or check out the new Greek place and she’d make him hold her bags when they went out shopping; this month they had plans to try out every gelato place and then rank them, and what is she supposed to do now?

“I miss him too,” she says, and tries to resist the urge to take Barry’s hand—it’s stupid to feel like she’s the only thing anchoring him, like he’d slip away without her when she can’t even get him to blink.

 

 

 

5.

 

She’s trying. For the record, she’s really trying.

“For the love of God,” her dad finally erupts after Barry has excused himself to take a phone call, “what on earth is going on between you two?”

“Nothing!” she squeaks out, feeling herself blush for what must be the hundredth time that night. Joe gives her his unimpressed, ‘I’m a cop and also your dad, you can’t fool me’ look. She hates that look.

“It’s nothing,” she insists.

It’s not nothing. She kept glancing at Barry all throughout dinner and he had to know because every time she looked over at him he tensed a little more, and god, she was being so obvious and making him so uncomfortable, she knew that, she did, and still she couldn’t help herself.

She has no idea how to act normally around Barry anymore. Her mind is stuck in a constant loop of _he likes you, he likes you, he likes you_

How is she supposed to go on with her life knowing he likes her? He likes her. He wants to kiss her. He’d kiss her if she told him to. The only reason he isn’t kissing her right now is because she hasn’t asked him to. They could be kissing _right now_.

“Seriously, Iris, are you okay?” her dad asks, leaving his suspicious routine to look honestly worried.

“Fine! I’m perfectly fine!”

Barry comes back in, rubbing at the back of his neck. The movement lifts his shirt a little, showing a patch of skin. Iris’ whole body catches on fire.

 _She is_ not _fine_.

Her dad plops down next to her on the couch after dinner. Barry’s hiding in the kitchen, pretending to wash the dishes but really avoiding her until it’s late enough he can go home. Which is fine. Everything’s fine.

“So,” Joe says cautiously. Oh god. He knows. “Barry told me about—the thing.” The part of Iris that’s always worried about Barry’s physical and emotional well-being bristles at calling his feelings a _thing_. “And I wanted to know how you’re—feeling. About that.”

She manages to stay silent for a full minute before she folds completely. “I just don’t know how—wait a minute. Why are you not freaking out? You don’t even look surprised.”

“Oh. Yeah,” he says awkwardly.

“You knew?”

“I’m a detective,” he scoffs. “And your dad. Of course I knew.”

Iris feels completely at war with herself. She wants to interrogate him, get him to say everything he knows—how long has he known, did Barry talk to him about it, when Barry says he lo—likes her, is this a small crush or has he thought about the names of their first children, because he’s never been in an actual, long-term relationship and _how can he know, how can he be sure?_ She wants to grab Barry and interrogate _him_ , except it’d be pretty insensitive and awful of her, and anyway it’s not like she can get anything out of him when she can’t even manage to look him in the eye.

And at the same time, she feels—betrayed, a bit. It hurts, that Barry’s been keeping this from her, and finding out that her father knew—

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, picking at the hem of her clothes.

He sighs. “Do you really think it’s my place to tell either of you about what you’re feeling?”

“I guess not.”

She can still hear the water running in the kitchen. _We have a dishwasher!_ she tries to psychically send at Barry.

“It doesn’t bother you?” she asks after a while. “He’s your kid, too.”

She’s always shied away from calling Barry her brother, but Joe’s always been his dad.

“I’ve had time to get used to the idea,” he replies noncommittally. “Does it bother _you_?”

Her first impulse is to deny it, but then she takes the time to think it over.

“It bothers me that he didn’t tell me. That I didn’t know. We’ve always told each other everything, but it’s more than that,” she tries to explain. “I mean—I’ve talked about Eddie with him. I’m always asking him if he has his eye on anyone. It doesn’t sit well with me, the idea that I must have been hurting him.”

She hides her face against her shoulder. “I’m hurting him right now.”

 

 

 

6.

 

Barry staggers into her room, white as a sheet, and she’s hit by a sense memory of when it was the other way around. It might be the drugs, but for a moment she feels as though she’s back in that room, dizzy and scared out of her mind, seeing his motionless body lying on the hospital bed and she wasn’t there, _she hadn’t even known_ —

She reaches out to him, desperate to reassure him that she’s okay and somehow feeling the need to reassure herself that he’s okay as well

Words are coming out of her mouth but she can’t recognize any of them besides his name; she thinks she might be telling him that everything’s fine.

His hand when it intertwines with hers is shaking badly, and he looks about to cry. “I’m sorry,” he’s saying over and over again.

What a picture they must be making, she thinks, shaking and clutching at each other and not making any sense.

Her dad bursts in, looking about as collected as either of them, and Barry shrinks away from her touch.

Her arm flails around trying to get his hand back in hers but he doesn’t seem to notice, walking backwards, his legs shaking under him like he’s itching to take off running.

Her dad’s insistent questions draw her attention away for only a second, but when she looks back the door is already closing behind him.

 

 

 

When she wakes up a few hours later, long after she convinced her dad to go check on Barry, the Flash is standing by the window, as far away from her as he can possibly be while still in the room, his body a dark shape outlined with moonlight.

“Hey,” she says, and then coughs. He doesn’t answer, but he fills a cup with water and brings it to her, taking great care not to brush their fingers together as he passes it over, and she knows right then that something is off.

“I’m profoundly sorry,” he says once she puts the cup down. He stares straight at her as he says it—his eyes are the same color as Barry’s, she notes absently—but he looks away as soon as he’s apologized, which is how she realizes that he hadn’t looked her in the eye once since she woke up.

“It wasn’t your fault—”

“It is”, he cuts her off abruptly, his voice tight. He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. I just—I came here to—”

She gets it half a second before he manages to get it out, and the words are almost muffled by the way the heart monitor goes mad: “I came to say goodbye.”

“No,” she contests reflexively.

“I have to,” he says. He sounds like he’s begging her—he sounds like Barry when he was begging her to stop her blog, and is that why he left? Is he angry she didn’t listen, so angry he can’t even look at her anymore?

“You got hurt because of me,” the Flash says helplessly. “You got hurt because—because I wanted to talk to you—”

He takes deep breaths, like Barry does to stave off panic attacks. She wants to reach out and take his hand in hers, but his body language is screaming at her that he wouldn’t welcome it.

She thinks he likes her. She doesn’t know quite how she feels about that. He’s so kind and funny and kinda dorky and his eyes look so much like Barry’s.

He’s also very strong and he has abs and he’s a freakin’ superhero and he likes to flirt with Iris—he’s like a fantasy Barry. Like the person Iris would describe when asked about her ideal man. He never feels quite real.

“I’m hurt because a bad guy tried to hurt me,” she tells him decisively, but he shakes his head, the stubborn git.

“You’re hurt because I was careless and I dragged you into this and I can’t—Iris, I _can’t_ see you again.”

“I told you already I’m not doing this because of you. I wanted to help my—Barry. I wanted to help him get his dad back. I wanted to help his mom get justice.”

He’s looking at her like every word out of her mouth hurts him.

“He’s not worth it,” he says.

“Shut up,” she says, angry. Thinks, _he’s worth everything_ , but that’s not what this is about. “We used to collect stuff, news clippings and that sort of things, about weird happenings all over the country, since we were kids. Like, some seriously fishy stuff has been happening in Kansas, you know. And when he—when he was in a coma, I kept doing it, so I could show him when he’d wake up. Especially since things were happening right here. I thought he’d wake up and we’d finally find a way to prove he was right, and that his dad was innocent. But when he came back he didn’t want to talk about all this stuff anymore. I still kept tracking it though.  And then there was you. And I like you. I do. I think you’re amazing. But this? The blog? It’s about me. It’s about what _I_ want to do, about who _I_ want to be. I think you’re great, and I love writing about you, but if you left town and hung up your cape tomorrow I wouldn’t stop writing.”

“Iris—”

“No, please let me finish. I’ve never had a purpose. I never knew what I wanted to do with my life, you know? Not like my dad and Barry did. They love their job so much, and I’ve always wanted that, but I never found it until this blog. So you’re wrong if you think I’m gonna stop. Things are happening in this town, things that the police won’t talk about, things the news won’t talk about, so I’m not gonna stop. It’s not safe to hide the truth from people—”, he flinches, “—so when there’s a freaking human torch wreaking havoc in town I’m gonna warn people. I’m gonna make sure they know who’s dangerous, and I’m gonna make sure they know you’re not, that you’ll help them and they should help you, that they can trust you. I’m gonna do every single thing I can think of to help even just one person, and you don’t have to like it, you don’t have to agree, but I’m not gonna let you take the blame for the choices I’m making.”

She catches her breath, and her heat rate slowly returns to normal. Her leg hurts really badly, but if she calls on a nurse to get some painkillers, the Flash is going to leave, and she doesn’t want that.

“You’re really stubborn,” he says.

“I get that from my dad,” she agrees happily. He snorts. His eyes are a bit wet still, but he doesn’t look like he wants to walk out of her life forever anymore.

“Now give me that jello,” she says, pointing to the cups on tray next to her bed.

He hands her the two cups, and she leaves him the red one without thinking—Barry’s favorite flavor—and takes the other one for herself. He doesn’t say anything though and happily digs in with a plastic spoon.

“I missed Sunday dinner,” she says mournfully.

He hums around his spoonful of jello. “This isn’t so bad, though, is it?”

“You’ve obviously never had any of my dad’s cooking,” she scoffs.

He laughs. “I don’t know,” he says. “I think it’s all about who you’re eating with.”

She flushes. She thinks she’d see his eyes crinkle if he wasn’t wearing a mask.

They eye the plate of hospital food distrustfully. She doesn’t even have to break out the puppy eyes to get him to go grab her Chinese.

 

 

 

7.

  

It’s awkward. It’s _super_ awkward.

Joe and Henry seem intent to be really show how grateful and respectful each other they are but at the same time they both seem to feel like they’ve got something to prove—so they keep exchanging weirdly earnest compliments and then being overly defensive.

Usually Barry can rely on Iris to defuse the tension, or at least to talk to while they ignore everyone else, but she’s probably acting even weirder.

She keeps asking his dad if he wants some more mac and cheese and is he cold, she can go get him a sweater, does he want to look at Barry’s awkward teenage pictures and also did he know that Barry was top student in all his classes except in PE but really what’s so great about, like, running, right—

“What are you doing?” Barry hisses to Iris while Joe and Henry coo over the album photo in the dining room.

“What?” she says defensively. “I just want him to feel comfortable! And welcome! He’s our family, too, right? I want him to know we took good care of you.”

“I’m not a dog,” he grumbles, but he gives in pretty quick when she looks at him. “You did,” he assures her. He looks a bit conflicted, and he’s avoiding her eyes. It happens a lot, Barry trying to act like he’s not completely—like he doesn’t _like her_ like her. It drives Iris mad to wonder if it’s something he’s always done and she just never noticed. “You took such great care of me.”

There was that one time when they were fourteen when Barry and Iris went to a party—a pretty tame party, Joe called the parents beforehand, dropped them off himself, came to pick them up afterwards—and there’s only so much teenagers can do alone in a basement with no alcohol and parents right upstairs, so long story short they played spin the bottle and Iris is pretty sure she was Barry’s first kiss. It was fine. His lips were a bit chapped, and neither of them closed their eyes, and Barry’s hand felt so warm—burning, really—where it was settled on her back, and his very green, very ugly Christmas sweater felt a bit scratchy under her own hands, and when she pulled away Barry was breathing so loud and so fast she was a little worried he was going to have a panic attack, and anyway, she barely remembers anything about it, really.

The point—she’s getting there!—is that for about a week afterwards Iris had some sort of stomach bug. She felt a bit squirmy whenever she saw Barry and her hands kept getting clammy and she kind of convinced herself she had a crush on Barry. It’s not a big deal. It wouldn't have been a big deal even if she _had_ had an actual crush on him. Barry's cute and kind and funny. He's wonderful, really. Who wouldn't have a crush on him? 

She kind of tried avoiding him for a bit, but to be honest she was pretty bad at it—she doesn’t think he even noticed. It turns out Iris is pretty bad at telling Barry she doesn’t want to hang out with him. As in, she doesn’t _actually_ manage to do it. She’s even worse at not texting him at the drop of a hat or seeking him out anytime she’s bored, or thinking about him, or—

She can’t _not_ have Barry in her life, is the conclusion she got to. He’s her best friend and her platonic soulmate. (She hardly ever has sex dreams about him, and while she does get a bit fixated on his shoulders or his mouth or his fingers once in a while, she shakes it off pretty quickly. Quickly enough. Barry’s never seemed to notice, so.)

She shakes herself off when she realizes Barry’s talking again.

“—and just stop acting so weird. Okay?”

“Sure.”

They go back to the table, where Henry has started telling Joe stories about Barry as a baby. This might be the greatest day of Iris's _life_.

At some point, they stop talking to raise their heads simultaneously and glare with a disturbing synchronicity at Barry who was texting under the table.

“No phone at the table,” they reprimand.

Iris can’t help but snicker. Barry elbows her on the side, which might seem really innocuous but he has really bony elbows. Iris truly has no choice but to get out the photos of Barry’s random emo phase that she happened to have in her pocket.

 

 

 

8.

 

“Dad?”

Iris turns around and Barry is standing in the middle of the living room. She didn’t hear him come in, which is surprising considering he doesn’t look like he could have snuck in quietly—sweaty and pale and wobbling on his feet as he is.

Iris can count on her hands the number of times Barry has called Joe _Dad_.

Joe rushes to his side and helps him to the couch. Iris puts down the plates she had in hands on the table.

“I’m sorry,” Barry says with a weak smile. “I think I’ve got a stomach bug or something. I didn’t mean to miss dinner.”

"It's okay, baby," Joe soothes him. "You're fine."

Barry's shirt lifts a bit when Joe helps him sit down, and Iris catches a glimpse of a white bandage wrapped all around him, and what looks like fresh bruising spilling out of it.

“Iris?” Joe calls. She looks back up to find them both staring at her, no small feat for Barry who seems to struggle with keeping his head upright.

She walks up to them and takes his hand. Squeezes.

“Can I get you something?” she asks once she can find her voice. “Water? I think we’ve got painkillers—”

“I’m fine,” Barry forces out, looking everything but. He leans his head against her arm and closes his eyes. “I’m fine,” he repeats.

She brushes his sweaty hair off his eyes with her free hand. She can feel her dad staring at her.

“Stay with me?” Barry asks.

“Of course,” she says. She feels like her heart is stuck in her throat.

She remembers Barry coming home with Joe all those years ago. She remembers the first time Barry had a panic attack. She remembers Barry getting sick their junior year, how she stayed home to take care of him while Joe was at work, how he was delirious from the fever and kept calling her name as if he thought she could make it better, how she had to take him to the emergency room and call her dad. She remembers getting the call that Barry was in a coma, remembers going into the hospital room and seeing his body just lying there.

She remembers what she was feeling then because it’s the same exact thing she’s feeling now. Helplessness. Fear. Guilt. She’s letting him down.

She can’t protect him from his mother’s death, from his fears, from viruses, from the world. She can’t protect him from himself.

 

 

 

Here is a small, non-exhaustive list of things Iris knows and tries not to think about:

The Flash first appeared soon after Barry woke up from his coma.

Barry is, and has always been an extremely bad liar.

The Flash’s eyes are the exact same color as Barry’s.

 

 

 


End file.
